Postdoc Modeling of osteoarthritis progression

at  TU Eindhoven

JOB DESCRIPTION

Do you want to contribute to the development of healthy activity advise to osteoarthritis patients?
Are you eager to work in a consortium with cell biologists, engineers, clinicians and patients?
Are you fascinated by research that combines image analysis, tissue engineering, and numerical modeling, and do you want to contribute from the modeling side?

JOB DESCRIPTION

Osteoarthritis, a painful and disabling joint disease, impairs everyday life activities of 1.5 million people in the Netherlands. There is no cure for osteoarthritis; current treatment focusses on reducing pain. Patients are encouraged to stay physically active, but which activity is beneficial, in general or for an individual patient, is unclear. The many partners in the LoaD project will together advance our understanding of how joint loading affects osteoarthritis in the individual patient, by integrating expertise from different disciplines. Effects of mechanical loading at the level of the patient, the joint, cartilage tissue, cell, and even the molecule are combined, and individual genetic variations and differences in responses to inflammation are included, using data from cohorts of osteoarthritis patients to data obtained from highly controlled laboratory experiments. Together, this should result in effective and affordable personalized activity strategies for individual osteoarthritis patients to combat the progression of the disease.
A major challenge in this project is to combine the research in all these disciplines, and translate data between the various studies. It is extremely difficult to understand how daily activity of a patient translates to load in a joint, tissue deformation and mechanotransduction at the cellular level, and subsequently how the cellular response affects the tissue and finally result in either repair of cartilage or further joint degeneration. For such translation, the project includes support through computational modelling.
In the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group, we developed finite element models that can be used to study joint and cartilage mechanics, but also to study cartilage changes over time, and ultimately to predict degeneration or repair, depending on the circumstances. These initial models require further development and tuning with experimental data.
Your task in the LoaD project will be two-fold.
First, you will use the data that comes available through the various studies within the LoaD-project, as well as using literature data, to advance our finite element models of cartilage mechanics, development and degeneration. Second, you will communicate with researchers from the various biomedical areas within LoaD, understand their questions and needs, and where possible support their analyses with model-based insights. Most importantly, you will identify where you can employ your finite element models to cross the bridge between various studies within the consortium, so that we can ultimately integrate the results of all studies into a viable advise on daily activities for patients. The former task requires that you are versatile with finite element modeling in the orthopaedic field, preferably with models of cartilage and joint mechanics.
The latter task requires that you have a self-sufficient, pro-active, curious and explorative character, and that you are generally interested in interdisciplinary biomedical research with a biomechanical context.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

• Motivated researcher, with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering research, or a comparable domain, and versatile with finite element modeling.
• Ability to conduct high quality academic research, reflected in demonstratable outputs.
• A team player who is self-sufficient, pro-active, communicative, curious and open, who enjoys collaborating with PhD students and researchers working in various biomedical fields, and who likes to coach Master’s students.
• A proven ability to manage complex projects to completion on schedule.
• Excellent (written and verbal) proficiency in English, good communication and leadership skills.

ABOUT US

Eindhoven University of Technology is an internationally top-ranking university in the Netherlands that combines scientific curiosity with a hands-on attitude. Our spirit of collaboration translates into an open culture and a top-five position in collaborating with advanced industries. Fundamental knowledge enables us to design solutions for the highly complex problems of today and tomorrow.

Please refer the Job description for details